by Stacey Jay
Alcohol and I weren’t a good mix.
An image flashed on my mental screen. The cast party. Me. Three shots of spiced rum. Mitch. His hands at the bottom of my shirt, his mouth on my bare stomach, lips hot against my skin.
I took a deep breath and pushed the image away, but it wasn’t easy. Especially considering we were passing Mitch’s house on the right. It was closed up, dark and quiet. His dad had rounds every other Saturday at the children’s hospital and Mitch and his band played at a lot of coffee shops and bar mitzvahs on weekends. Maybe he’d had a gig after the Belle Meade plantation fall festival where we’d both volunteered this afternoon.
Or maybe he had a date. It would be good if he had a date. Mitch needed to find someone. Then maybe he and I would really be able to put our mistake behind us and be friends again. We’d barely spoken at the festival, both of us strained and awkward in our historic servants’ uniforms, as uncomfortable as strangers.
Just thinking about it made my stomach ache.
“Mitch hasn’t been around much,” Isaac observed, speeding up as we passed the Birnbaums’ and headed out of the subdivision where we’d all grown up playing together. Three best friends. Even when Isaac and I had paired off, we’d all stayed friends. It was only in the past year that Isaac and Mitch had grown apart.
I shrugged, trying to look casual though the sound of Mitch’s name on Isaac’s lips made me want to fidget. “He must be busy with his band.”
“His band sucks.”
I laughed. “They do, kind of. But they have fun, and they’ve gotten a lot better lately.”
“You’ve heard them play? When?”
“I caught one of their practices in his garage. Mom had me bring over the rest of the cake she made for Dad’s birthday so she and Dad wouldn’t eat it all.” My voice was thin and strained. I might as well take a Magic Marker and write guilty as sin on my forehead. I had to pull it together, steer the conversation to safer topics. “Speaking of eating, have you had dinner?”
“No. I wasn’t hungry.”
“Good. I’m starving. I didn’t get a chance to eat at the festival. The volunteers didn’t even get a snack break.” I reached over to play with the hair at the nape of Isaac’s neck. He’d always said my touch gave him chills—in the good way—but his muscles didn’t relax beneath my fingers the way they usually did. “We could get some corn dogs at Lovelace’s and take them to the park near Bellevue.”
“We could.” His eyes stayed on the road.
I bit my lip, torn between asking him what was wrong and trying to make the best of his bad mood. Isaac didn’t like to talk about things that were bothering him. He kept quiet and worked through his feelings on his own. Mitch joked that Isaac went into his “man cave” when he was upset.
No. Not going to think about Mitch. Any. More.
I turned to look out the window, watching as we flew past the historic park and the 1800s schoolhouse we’d all been forced to tour a dozen times in elementary school, and the houses began to get farther and farther apart. Fenced yards gave way to fields and pastures lit by soft sunset light. Lovelace’s, the country drive-in with the best corn dogs and thick malted shakes in the Nashville area, was still a good five miles away.
Five miles of tense, cranky-Isaac-pouting-in-his-man-cave silence.
I cracked the window, suddenly needing some air. The smell of fresh-cut hay swept inside, sharp like baked sunshine. “The old mill is still open until November. We could climb up to the roof and have a picnic.”
Isaac loved picnics. It was the kind of thing he wouldn’t want me telling his basketball friends, but he loved packing up my mom’s old Victorian lunch box and taking it to a park. For my last birthday, he’d snuck some wine into the basket along with our ham-and-cheese sandwiches and barbecue-flavored chips. The wine was pink and sticky sweet and awful, but we’d drunk it all, giggling by the end. Then, after two years of waiting, we’d finally slept together.
It had been good, so good, and gotten even better. I loved being with Isaac, loved feeling him so close to me, knowing he was all mine for a half hour or more. I didn’t want to be with anyone else, I didn’t want to remember—
“Practice has been interesting this week,” Isaac said.
“Yeah?” I struggled to focus. “Good interesting or bad interesting?”
“The new equipment manager is really funny.” He was in non sequitur mode. Typical Isaac, especially when he was in a mood. “Hunter Needles, he’s in ninth grade. You know him, right?”
“I know his big sister, Sarah. She’s one of my drama friends.” Well, I supposed she was still one of my friends. She’d slipped me a birthday card at school yesterday. It had surprised the heck out of me, and I’d stuttered through my thank-you. I hadn’t remembered her birthday a few months before and felt awful.
But then, we’d grown apart in the last year too, just like Isaac and Mitch. We were both so busy—her with the young artists’ program at Nashville Rep, the professional theater in the city, and me with Isaac. Maybe Isaac and I needed to make more time for friends. Maybe we’d been spending too much time together. After all, we had our entire lives to be a couple; shouldn’t we make some space for other people?
Do you really want Mitch and Isaac becoming BFFs again? Really?
No. I didn’t. Not at all. “Sarah’s really cool,” I said, forcing a smile, struggling to put all Mitch-flavored thoughts out of my mind.
“Yeah. Hunter said she talks about you sometimes.” The sentence hung in the air, heavy and threatening, an ax that could swing in my direction any second. The atmosphere in the truck crackled and pricked and in that moment, I knew . . .
He knew.
I hadn’t dated the boy for three years for nothing. I knew Isaac’s angry voice, I knew his really angry voice, and I knew how he sounded when he talked about wanting to punch his dad in the face for embarrassing him at another game, for screaming Isaac’s every mistake from the stands until Mr. Tayte had to be removed by one of the refs.
When Isaac was his angriest, his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. Soft, quiet. Like now. I’d had to strain to hear him over the hum of the wheels.
My heart raced and my tongue darted out to dampen my lips as I sent up a silent prayer that for once I was reading Isaac wrong. “Sarah’s sweet. She gave me a birthday card yesterday.”
“Yeah, she seems sweet. Honest, too.”
His words pressed in around me, crowding, shoving the truth in my face, but I refused to admit that I’d seen it. “She is. I really like her.” The locket burned on my chest, so hot I could feel it through my T-shirt.
Maybe this was why Gran never wore the necklace, because it had some kind of weird short-circuited wires inside or something. I should have just tossed it into the key dish without worrying about her getting angry. It was so hot, as if a fire burned inside the silver plates.
I reached up to grasp it between my fingers. It cooled in my hand, and, strangely, I felt a little calmer with it fisted in my fingers. It had given me hope earlier.
Some mistakes weren’t meant to last.
This had to be one of those mistakes. It was only one time. One slipup, in years of trying so hard to be everything Isaac wanted me to be.
“I was thinking about asking Sarah to come over this weekend,” I said, smiling though it felt like my face would shatter. “Maybe on Sunday to—”
“Don’t, Katie.”
He never said my name. Isaac called me “babe” or “girl” or sometimes “shorty” when he was joking around with some of the other guys from the team. He didn’t call me Katie. Ever. When he flipped on his turn signal, my stomach cramped in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
“Where are we going? Isaac, where—”
With a frustrated sound, Isaac steered onto a gravel road and slammed the truck into park. He shut off the ignition with an angry twist and turned to face me. Finally. Horribly.
His eyes met mine: crystal blue, with darker
blue stripes all around—like a tiger’s-eye stone, but pale and cool. They were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. It ripped at things inside me to think that I’d never see love in those eyes ever again. But there wasn’t any love there now. There was only anger. And hurt. And a tiny shred of doubt that was making him crazy. He had to know for sure if I’d cheated, but he didn’t really want to know. And he would never forgive me if I told him the truth.
“Tell me, Katie. Is it true?”
No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. If I tried hard enough, I could keep this from happening. “Is what true?”
“Stop it!” His face was red, his cheeks flushed the way they were at the end of a rough quarter. “Don’t lie. You suck at lying.”
I clutched the locket even tighter. “Isaac, please, I—”
“Just tell me.” Soft now, soft voice working to convince me he was still in control. But he wasn’t. I could tell. Just like he could tell I was lying through my freshly brushed teeth. We knew each other too well. “Were you with him? At the cast party?”
Oh, God. What could I say? What could I do?
“Were you. With him?”
When I finally spoke, my voice was even softer than his. “You were supposed to be there.”
He sucked in a breath. It came out shaky, surprise and grief mixing in the soft sound he made as his hands gripped the steering wheel and fisted tight. “Practice ran late and then I fell asleep on the couch. I told you that.” His eyes were shining. That was all it took to make the tears in mine spill down my cheeks. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be.
The locket burned hot again, so hot I dropped my hands to my lap, twining my fingers together. Stupid thing! I couldn’t deal with malfunctioning jewelry right now. My entire life was falling apart!
“You said you would come.”
“So I didn’t, so you decided to sleep with Mitch?”
“No! I didn’t sleep with him.” I wanted to jump out of the truck and run or reach over and pull Isaac into my arms, but knew I couldn’t do either. I had to stay here—alone and condemned on my side of the truck—taking my medicine and praying for another chance. “And I didn’t decide anything, it just—”
“It just happened?” The contempt in his voice made me flinch and the tears come faster. “You just ended up half naked with him by the Regises’ pool where everybody could see you?”
My cheeks burned. “I wasn’t half naked . . . and no one could see.”
“Sarah saw.”
“Isaac.” A sob rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. I couldn’t lose it completely, I had to convince Isaac it wasn’t the way he imagined it. That I’d just been angry and hurt and Mitch had been there to listen and things had gone too far. “Please, I swear to you, I—”
“And Sarah told her brother, a loudmouth little freshman who I’m sure told half the school you cheated on me!” Louder now and even angrier, angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Was that even the first time?”
“It was, you know it was.” The sob escaped, I couldn’t stop it. I reached for him, needing to touch him, but he pulled away, upper lip curling like my hands were covered in cow dung from the pasture outside the window.
“I don’t know anything.” He shook his head, back and forth, back and forth, an eraser clearing all memory of me out of his brain, his heart. “For all I know, you and Mitch could have been hooking up for years.”
“No.” My voice was firm, stronger. He had the right to be angry, but he knew better. He was everything to me. Everything. “You know that’s not true.”
“Come on, Katie.” His tone turned my name into a disgusting, dirty thing. “You always were great about sharing. Even when we were babies. So maybe you wanted me and Mitch to share you.”
“No.”
“Mitch can take a bite, then Isaac can take a bite, then Mitch, then Isaac, until the cookie is all gone.” The sarcasm was so thick I could taste it, his grin as cruel as any expression I’d ever seen on his face. “Just like when we were kids.”
“Yeah, and I never took a bite for myself,” I sobbed, tears falling harder. “It was always about keeping you happy. Making sure you and Mitch got along and you were happy with me. That you liked me. I’ve tried so hard. For years!”
His blue eyes froze so cold I swore I could feel the temperature in the truck drop ten degrees. “Well, you won’t have to try so hard anymore. You don’t have to worry about me liking you ever again.” He reached across my lap and popped the door. “Get out.”
“What?” I couldn’t seem to process what he was saying, even when he grabbed my purse and threw it outside. We were at least three miles outside of town and even farther from my house. Surely he wouldn’t.
“Get! Out!” And then he grabbed my arm, so tight I knew there would be a bruise there tomorrow, and shoved me out the door.
I fell onto the gravel, palms catching my fall just before my face could connect with rock and dirt. Thunder crashed through the darkening sky, making me flinch, ensuring there wasn’t time to get to my feet before Isaac fired up his truck and drove away, spraying dust all over me and my birthday outfit, ending three years of togetherness in a squeal of tires.
Chapter Two
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 6:05 P.M.
Sometimes storms come out of nowhere in Nashville.
One minute, the sky is clear, the sun setting pink and purple behind a field of baled hay and sleepy cows. The next minute, black clouds sweep in from the west, full of cold rain and electricity, rumbling out a warning to all living things still unlucky enough to be outdoors.
The cows even knew something nasty was coming. One of the big mamas called from a tree near the center of the field and the rest of the herd turned away from their munching at the fence, ambling toward the sound of her moo. I paused at the edge of the road, watching them go, listening to the thunder roll, flinching as the first cold drops fell on my bare arms. As the rain began to fall in earnest, I fumbled in my purse one last time, praying I’d missed my cell the first three times I’d looked.
But my cell still wasn’t there. I never took my phone when I went out with Isaac. He had his phone and no one ever called me except him. And Mitch.
Mitch. Why had he kissed me? Why? After all the years we’d been friends?
I hadn’t even expected to see him at the cast party—he wasn’t into drama-club events any more than Isaac. But there he was, just inside the Regises’ door, one of the first things I’d seen when I’d arrived, flushed and giggling, high on my first and only performance as Emily in Our Town.
I’d been an understudy for three plays, but that was the first time I’d ever had to fill in for someone. The first time and it had been the lead role in the last scheduled performance. I’d been so scared, shaking all over in the minutes before I stepped onstage, but I’d done it. I’d pulled it off and the crowd had given us a standing ovation.
The applause had lifted me up so high that it had been a long fall back down to earth. I’d hit hard once I’d realized Isaac wasn’t with Mitch, that Isaac hadn’t made it to the second act of the play like he’d promised, that he hadn’t even bothered to come to the cast party to celebrate with me.
I’d tried calling his cell four times, but he hadn’t answered.
After years of making sure I was there for every single basketball game, I’d been sick with disappointment. Literally sick, my stomach gurgling and pitching, even before I’d started in with the rum.
“He was probably wiped from practice. His car was still in the parking lot when I got there for the play,” Mitch said, his dark brown eyes concerned as he watched me pour my second shot of spiced rum into a red plastic cup.
The alcohol was flowing freely and Becca Regis’s parents were nowhere to be seen. But that’s why we always had our cast parties at her house. Her parents didn’t care what we did so long as nothing got broken, no one drowned in their pool, and we promised to pick designated drivers to get all the drunk teenagers home safely.
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“Yeah, probably.” I tossed back the drink, wincing as it burned my throat and sent clouds of toxic fumes surging into my head. It was nasty stuff, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get drunk. Really drunk.
“His loss.” Mitch shrugged, then leaned down to prop his elbows on the counter of the island in the center of the kitchen. He was tall—even taller than Isaac. The movement barely brought his face even with mine. “You were great tonight. You know that, right? It doesn’t matter if Isaac was there or not.”
I reached for the rum. “It does to me.”
“Yeah. I hear you.” He dropped his head and his wavy brown hair fell over one eye.
He’d been growing it out since last Christmas and it was nearly down to his chin. It looked surprisingly good on him. I’d never thought Mitch could pull off the whole rocker look, but he did. Black jeans and long hair worked for him. The funny shirts he wore made all the difference. At the moment it was a dark gray A CITY BUILT ON ROCK AND ROLL WOULD BE STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND Threadless tee. It had made me laugh when I’d first seen him, before I’d realized he was at the party alone.
I took another drink, a smaller one. I could feel my head beginning to float. I’d only been drunk a handful of times, but I knew enough to slow down and wait to see how the alcohol was hitting me before I drank any more.
“I’m glad I was there. I had no idea you were so good.” He chucked me on the arm with a gentle fist. “I was really surprised.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“Sorry.” He grinned in a way that made it clear he wasn’t sorry at all. “But I really thought you were going to be awful.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Thanks, again.”
“Then I would have had to find some nice way to get you to give up this drama stuff once and for all.” Mitch made a grab for my cup and took a drink. He was a drink stealer from way back. I’d given up telling him to get his own. “Friends don’t let friends make idiots of themselves in public.”